Tag Archive: Interest rates

Euro and Sterling Record New Lows for the Year

2021-11-12

by

2021-11-12

Overview: The capital markets remain unsettled.  The US CPI with a 6%-handle has lifted bond market volatility, disrupted rallies in stocks, and extended the dollar's rally.   Small gains in the US S&P 500 and NASDAQ yesterday and a better news stream from China helped lift Asia Pacific equities today.  Benchmarks in Japan, South Korea, and India rose more than 1%.  Europe's Stoxx 600 is struggling as energy, health care, and utilities are...

Read More »

Weekly Market Pulse: Growth Scare?

2021-11-01

by

2021-11-01

A couple of weeks ago the 10 year Treasury note yield rose 16 basis points in the course of 5 trading days. That move was driven by near term inflation fears as I discussed last week. Long term inflation expectations were and are well behaved.

Read More »

Weekly Market Pulse: Inflation Scare!

2021-10-25

by

2021-10-25

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial stock averages made new all time highs last week as bonds sold off, the 10 year Treasury note yield briefly breaking above 1.7% before a pretty good sized rally Friday brought the yield back to 1.65%. And thus we’re right back where we were at the end of March when the 10 year yield hit its high for the year.

Read More »

You Don’t Have To Take My Word For It About Eliminating QE

2021-10-24

by

2021-10-24

You don’t have to take my word for it. QE doesn’t work and it never has. That’s not just my assessment, pull out any chart of interest rates for wherever gets the misfortune of having been wasted with one of these LSAP’s.

Read More »

The Great Eurodollar Famine: The Pendulum of Money Creation Combined With Intermediation

2021-10-13

by

2021-10-13

It was one of those signals which mattered more than the seemingly trivial details surrounding the affair. The name MF Global doesn’t mean very much these days, but for a time in late 2011 it came to represent outright fear. Some were even declaring it the next “Lehman.”

Read More »

Tapering Or Calibrating, The Lady’s Not Inflating

2021-10-07

by

2021-10-07

We’ve got one central bank over here in America which appears as if its members can’t wait to “taper”, bringing up both the topic and using that particular word as much as possible. Jay Powell’s Federal Reserve obviously intends to buoy confidence by projecting as much when it does cut back on the pace of its (irrelevant) QE6.

Read More »

Weekly Market Pulse: What Is Today’s New Normal?

2021-08-09

by

2021-08-09

Remember “The New Normal”? Back in 2009, Bill Gross, the old bond king before Gundlach came along, penned a market commentary called “On the Course to a New Normal” which he said would be: “a period of time in which economies grow very slowly as opposed to growing like weeds, the way children do; in which profits are relatively static; in which the government plays a significant role in terms of deficits and reregulation and control of the...

Read More »

Quantitative Easing: A Boon or Curse?

2021-07-24

by

2021-07-24

Central banks’ massive Quantitative Easing (QE) programs have come under scrutiny many times since the central banks fired up the printing press and began quantitative easing programs en masse after the 2008-09 Great Financial Crisis. However, the increase in central bank assets due to quantitative easing programs during the crisis pale in comparison to the QE programs during the Covid pandemic. As economies recovered after the...

Read More »

Weekly Market Pulse: As Clear As Mud

2021-07-19

by

2021-07-19

Is there anyone left out there who doesn’t know the rate of economic growth is slowing? The 10 year Treasury yield has fallen 45 basis points since peaking in mid-March. 10 year TIPS yields have fallen by the same amount and now reside below -1% again. Copper prices peaked a little later (early May), fell 16% at the recent low and are still down nearly 12% from the highs.

Read More »

Third CPI In A Row, Yet All Eyes On That 30s Auction

2021-07-14

by

2021-07-14

U.S. Core CPI, Jan 1990 - Jan 2021
Three in a row, huge CPI gains. According to the BLS, headline consumer price inflation surged 5.39% (unadjusted) year-over-year during June 2021. This was another month at the highest since July 2008 (the last transitory inflationary episode). The core CPI rate gained 4.47% last month over June last year, the biggest since November 1991.

Read More »

Weekly Market Pulse: Is It Time To Panic Yet?

2021-07-12

by

2021-07-12

TNX Daily, Dec 2020 - Jul 2021
Until last week you hadn’t heard much about the bond market rally. I told you we were probably near a rally way back in early April when the 10 year was yielding around 1.7%. And I told you in mid-April that the 10 year yield could fall all the way back to the 1.2 to 1.3% range.

Read More »

Measuring Inflation and the Week Ahead

2021-07-12

by

2021-07-12

There is quite an unusual price context for new week's economic events, which include June US CPI, retail sales, and industrial production, along with China's Q2 GDP, and the meetings for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Bank of Canada, and the Bank of Japan.

Read More »

Bond Reversal In Japan, But Pay Attention To It In Germany

2021-07-09

by

2021-07-09

Japanese Gov't Bond Yields, Jan 2016 - Jul 2021
Yield curve control, remember that one? For a little while earlier this year, the modestly reflationary selloff in bonds around the world was prematurely oversold as some historically significant beginning to a massive, conclusive regime change.

Read More »

Anyone Remember That Whole SLR Cliff?

2021-07-02

by

2021-07-02

UST Yield Curve
Does anyone remember the SLR “cliff?” Of course you don’t, because in the end it didn’t seem to make any difference. For a few weeks, it was kind of ubiquitous if only in the sense that it was another one of those deep plumbing issues no one seems able to understand (forcing all the “experts” to run to Investopedia in order write something up about it).

Read More »

A Clear Balance of Global Inflation Factors

2021-06-30

by

2021-06-30

Europe HICP and Germany HICP, Jan 2007 - May 2021
Back at the end of May, Germany’s statistical accounting agency (deStatis) added another one to the inflationary inferno raging across the mainstream media. According to its flash calculations, German consumer prices last month had increased by the fastest rate in 13 years.

Read More »

Weekly Market Pulse: Nothing To See Here. No, Really. Nothing.

2021-04-12

by

2021-04-12

The answer to the question, “What should I do to my portfolio today (this week, this month)? is almost always nothing. Humans, and especially portfolio managers, have a hard time believing that doing nothing is the right response….to anything…or nothing. We are programmed to believe that success comes from doing things, not not doing things.

Read More »

Rechecking On Bill And His Newfound Followers

2021-04-09

by

2021-04-09

The benchmark 10-year US Treasury has obtained some bids. Not long ago the certain harbinger of bond rout doom, the long end maybe has joined the rest of the world in its global pause if somewhat later than it had begun elsewhere (including, importantly, its own TIPS real yield backyard).

Read More »

What Gold Says About UST Auctions

2021-03-11

by

2021-03-11

US Treasury & Auction Rates, 2018-2021
The “too many” Treasury argument which ignited early in 2018 never made a whole lot of sense. It first showed up, believe it or not, in 2016. The idea in both cases was fiscal debt; Uncle Sam’s deficit monster displayed a voracious appetite never in danger of slowing down even though – Economists and central bankers claimed – it would’ve been wise to heed looming inflationary pressures to cut back first.

Read More »

What Might Be In *Another* Market-based Yield Curve Twist?

2021-02-23

by

2021-02-23

Pro forma CES Private Payrolls, 2020-2021
With the UST yield curve currently undergoing its own market-based twist, it’s worth investigating a couple potential reasons for it. On the one hand, the long end, clear cut reflation: markets are not, as is commonly told right now, pricing 1979 Great Inflation #2, rather how the next few years may not be as bad (deflationary) as once thought a few months ago.

Read More »

FX Daily, February 9: Players are Not Buying Everything Today

2021-02-09

by

2021-02-09

The rally of US benchmarks to new record highs helped lift most Asia Pacific markets today, but the bulls are pausing in Europe, and there has been little follow-through buying of US shares.  Australia, South Korea, and Indonesia did not participate in today's regional advance led by a 2% rally in China's main indices.

Read More »